Something Big - Average, Based on 3 Critics

AllMusic - 60Based on rating 6/10

60

Mary Mary still know how to make an entrance, opening their sixth album with a raucous stomper -- the album’s title track -- that samples the Jackson 5's “Mama’s Pearl. ” The following track, “Something Bigger,” increases the energy with super-charged marching-band percussion. When Warryn Campbell's production work isn’t quite as in-the-face, the duo does not exactly dull their message; the sleek midtempo track “Blind,” for instance,” isn’t merely humble but verbally self-lacerating.

“Sitting With Me”, a lovely lilting number from Mary Mary’s sixth album Something Big, portrays the R&B duo as total Christian schooldorks. Mean kids call them “holy roller”, “Jesus freak”, and “geek”; they’re picked last for the team; they’re basically Taylor Swift in the “You Belong to Me” video. Like plenty of schooldorks, Mary Mary console themselves by remembering that Jesus was also unpopular—the last week of his life, anyway—and drive the point home by singing powerfully, “I’ll sit on the sidelines as long as he’s sitting with me!” Christian rocker Steve Taylor once memorably sang “Jesus is for losers”, and Mary Mary would surely agree.

Scott Weinrich The music blog Terminal Escape links to digital-sound files of cassettes. And that works in and of itself — listening through the wrong medium is fundamentally excellent. But here’s something very special: recently it posted a link to an old mixtape made by the guitarist Scott Weinrich, a k a Wino. Mr.